Good morning Italy

After our first night in the Amalfi Coast, we woke to a stunning sunrise view from our room the the villa.

Luckily we were able to go back to sleep for a bit, since we were still trying to catch up from no sleep on the plane from a crying baby.

We began the day cooking for lunch. We made potato pies, two kinds of pasta, and a bunch of things I can't pronounce. We will definitely be making the pasta back home.

After consuming a fair amount of wine while cooking and during lunch,  it was time for a nap to rest up before our evening activity...a visit to the historic paper mill, shopping in Amalfi and dinner in Atrani.

We're leaving...on a jet plane...dont know when we'll be back again

Let the honeymoon begin! We arrived at the airport with only a bit of a bumpy start. Crazy enough week that neither of us had packed yet. After fighting the crud since a few days after the wedding, I finally gave up thinking it would get better and went to the doctor. Next was a tech visit to service the HVAC unit that was making a weird noise. Lastly, we had a less than stellar Uber experience. The car was dirty and his trunk was too full to hold both our suitcases! Luckily, check-in and security were smooth sailing. So now we just hurry up and wait for boarding...

Rainy days are still beautiful in Italy

On Tuesday (5/1), it was a beautiful morning and most of the group decided to walk to the villa in the morning. I was still exhausted from jetlag and because we stayed up until after midnight, so I opted to sleep in the extra 45 minutes. True, it would have been good to get the exercise to work off some of that gazillion calories I'd been ingesting, but I was on vacation, so just let it go people....

View outside my bedroom  looking the other way

View out the the living room into the piazza

Jenna the barrista (aka the espresso beeotch)

Shortly after we arrived at the villa, it started to rain. No worries though, because the wine started flowing almost immediately after I finished making espressos and cappuccinos for the group.

All of today's ingredients beautifully displayed

Carla demonstrates the proper way to tie the roast so that the pancetta maintains full contact with the roast

 We made Bolognese sauce (now I know what I'm going to do with all my tomatoes in the garden this summer!), Brasato al Barolo roast and panna cotta with strawberry/wine/amaretto sauce, and finally...Pappardelle. On the side, Carla decided to prepare some spinach to go with the roast and surprised us all when she added the slightest hint of nutmeg.

Demonstrating the proper way to release the Pappardelle from its folds

The best laid plans...

Well sorry folks... I had hoped to update the blog throughout the week, but we had a pretty full schedule and the next couple of times I was near the computer, others in the group were using it to arrange their travel plans for the following week. So, now I have double duty in order to catch everyone up. I think since I took over 1200 photos, that it's going to take a little time to sift through them and I may have to spread out the remainder of the trip highlights over the next week or so. I've at least got all the photos downloaded onto the computer now. Unfortunately,  I haven't even finished jotting down all my notes in my hand written journal...

Anyhooooo...the last entry was sparse on details, so I may come back to that later to fill in more.

I woke up Sunday morning and enjoyed the amazing view outside my window.

Lots of cooking on Sunday ...we made Panzanella, Tuscan roasted chicken and potatoes and tiramisu.  Carla is a wonderful cook and I love the family style cooking atmosphere rather than a formal academic style. We spent about 5 hours cooking and socializing and were able to enjoy our lunch in the outdoor cabana.

After lunch we went to Pitigliano. It was a medieval town with the quaintest feel to it. I've always loved doors, and I think I took about 50 pictures of different doors.

We visited the Jewish Ghetto which is a series of underground caves that they used for sacred ceremonies. There was also a kosher wine cellar...

Unfortunately, when we arrived back in Soriano and took a quick break to go back to our apartments for a minute before dinner, I arrived at mine to find two strange girls inside...taking the skybox (cable). Not speaking a word of English, I was trying to interpret what they were saying with my dictionary. Casa nostra means 'our house'. They put the box back and left. Of course I was a bit rattled after that, so when I went to dinner, I told Rocky (part of CDV) what had happened, so he made some phone calls.

Rocky came to the rescue and was very quick to get to the bottom of it. Turns out the owner did not have it on his books that the apartment was reserved for the week and sent his daughter to go get the cable box (we're still not really sure why). Anyway, I felt better knowing that it was just an accidental mix up.

On Monday, we did not have any cooking classes and went to a few towns to visit the wine cellars. The first one we went to was in the same town with the piazza that the movie New Moon was filmed in.

The wine cellar we visited is widely recognized as the most beautiful wine cellar in the world. We went to Castelnuovo d'Abate to hear the Gregorian chant by the monks.

We visited another winery Solaria, where I bought a wonderful wine called Brunello. Then we went into Pienza for cheese tasting...I had no idea there were so many versions of Pecorino! Dinner was at the mountain villa of Maria Grazia for a homemade dinner that was so good, I think I would have licked my plate had there not been witnesses.

I have to get off the computer now because today we are back at Villa Eddarella cooking and the pasta dough has finished rising...

Buon giorno!

After a bit of a bumpy start, I finally made it to Italy. My flight was delayed by an hour and 20 min out of Dulles and so I missed my connecting flight out of Newark. This was, of course, the last flight to Rome. They routed me to Heathrow instead and to Rome from there. Since I was supposed to have arrived at 7 40 am and now arrived at 3pm, plans to get to Soriano had to be changed. I was originally supposed to have had a driver meet me at the airport, but now I would need to catch the train to Orte and I would be picked up there. I wasn't planning on taking the train, so I hadn't done any research on it and had to wing it a bit. I bought a ticket for a train leaving in 5 minutes. I still had to validate the ticket and get on the right platform. I jumped on the train at the last minute, with my suitcases, and crossed my fingers. Had an interesting conversation with the train attendant, but luckily she confirmed that I was indeed on the correct train and that no transfers were required.  Thankfully, she also told me what time the train was to arrive in the station because most of the stops I couldn't tell which station we were at until we departed again. I arrived in Orte about 6pm and was picked up at 630pm.  I was the last to arrive...so the party could begin!

The evolution of the trip to Italy

After redecorating the bedroom, redoing the deck, transforming most of the basement into livable space, and reconfiguring the mud room to be organized, I decided that the kitchen was next in line. I hate white cabinets, it's not laid out well at all, and the lighting is terrible. I had originally intended just to paint it,but then it expanded into new appliances, cabinets, lighting, and flooring. Then I decided that I'd really like to knock out a wall and expand the kitchen into the dining room. I never use the living room, so that would be re-purposed as the dining room. I love the warmth of Tuscan style decorating and started searching for decorating ideas and collecting it on my Pinterest board. Of particular interest to me is this one lighting fixture that is just SO ME....

Yes, those are mason jars...what could be more perfect for someone who loves to can as much as I do? Anyway, that's sort of how the whole kitchen renovation idea grew after I started pinning ideas.

A coworker mentioned that he and his wife went on a wine tour...brilliant! So, naturally I started to think about what my next vacation would be, and of course I love wine. But then again, I love to cook and want to redo the kitchen, so wouldn't it be great if I could combine it all? So, I googled cooking vacations, and low and behold, what should appear, but a slew of links for Tuscan cooking vacations. OMG - that was too coincidental since I wanted the kitchen to have a Tuscan feel to it. OK, vacation theme and destination - done. I found a lot of different tours and bounced several of them off of Marianne, my travel agent from Classic Travel and she helped narrow down my choices. After speaking with the owners of this company, she thought we had a real winner with Culture Discovery Vacations. She suggested the tour that included chocolate because it had availability for the week I was looking at going in June (when I was scheduled to not have kids again). But I liked the food in the Tuscan Sun tour better, plus we get to stay in apartments instead of a hotel. So, I had chosen which tour I was going on...wow, I'm on a roll! Looking up flights, I happen to check a variety of search engines and they also show calendars with prices on different dates so you can see when you'll get the best deals. Hmmm...flights in June are kinda pricey...what's that I see at the end of April? Flights for $700 less than June? Ummm, yeah...no brainer. Did some quick checking at work for deadlines, swap children visiting Dad from June to April, and Voila! It's done! In the span of less than a week, an idea was spawned, developed and implemented. For me, that's some serious shootin' from the hip. Especially since the end result was a big overseas vacation in only 3 weeks!

So, that's how the travel plans for Italy evolved.